


Where flowers bloom (and where boys don't let go)

by lantislyfe



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy is a sad boy, F/M, Light Angst, M/M, an au kind of?, its only mentioned non-con, steve is like mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 07:47:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19044226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lantislyfe/pseuds/lantislyfe
Summary: Billy Hargrove hasn't always been angry, not in Cali.





	Where flowers bloom (and where boys don't let go)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my take on the whole Billy backstory I guess??  
> Cheers for a fanon before st3

Billy is 8 years old when his mom leaves, he remembers everything. It was one of those late afternoons in June, the ones where the sun peeks through the windows and leaves a light in funny shapes on the furniture. 

They were renovating the kitchen, had the kitchen torn down, they were gonna redo it with a big kitchen island with some mosaic designs. He had gotten to help with the shapes and with the colors. It was the last thing to be done with the house until it was their home. 

He knows they had a vase with picked wildflowers on the little kitchen table, he knows this because it was left there for weeks. Until the stem rotted and the petals fell off, one by one until there was none left.

He sat on the porch when she left, he hadn't known why she left, it was just one of those things she did his dad said. But he sat in the late afternoon sun letting the sun make his freckles come out to play and his hair glow like a halo. She had sat with him for a while, on the porch with her purse in one hand and his hand in his other. She said it wasn't his fault. She gave him her necklace, pulled it over her head, he had giggled when it had gotten stuck in her hair. She had giggled too. Then she wiped a tear from her eye. The necklace had felt so big and heavy in his palm, like he held the world in his hands, in retrospect he kind of did. At least a part of it.

Then she gave him a kiss on the cheek, a ruffle in his hair and a promise to always love him. Then she walked to her car, a beat up old VW in pale yellow. He knows what dress she had worn, it was a floral one. It had been expensive and he had helped pick it out, even walked with the bag in his arms on the way home - just to be safe. Now he saw it for the last time through a car window, illuminated by the sun and stained by memories of someone he did not recognize. 

He and his dad ate in front of the tv that night, they never did otherwise. His mom had said that it was no way to raise a respectable young man. Maybe it wasn't. How would he know, he was just a boy. 

Then they did it again the next day and the day after. 

The day she left, he sneaked up at night and waited by the living room window, waiting for something. Maybe for her, he thought that maybe this was just one of those nights where she ran off and came back in the morning, in time for breakfast. But there was a empty seat the next morning. And so it would be for the coming years. No matter what, no one sat on that chair. Because it was moms chair, and she was coming back. Little did he know that someone would one day claim it as theirs. And he would cry. 

He got a new babysitter. A kind redhead by the name of Marie, she was a real pretty girl with long blonde hair, down to her waist. She would sit with him on the porch until his dad came home, she’d run her delicate fingers through his hair, tell him stories about boys and girls far away, about boys saving girls from monsters and dragons. When he asks if she thinks he would be a brave knight she smiles, twirls his hair around her fingers and whispers real low “you would be the bravest knight north of Mexico”. He always liked the knights the most.

She reminded him of his mother, always wore floral dresses and her hair long, had a sweet voice and talked about moving east, to the schools, to the success. He could never understand them. He loved it there, by the beach. Smelling like the ocean and feeling the sun no matter where you go. 

He gets older and she leaves.

Instead, he's 12 and he hangs around the skate park. He likes it, feels cool like he fits in. Girls tell him to save his hair out, so he does. The girls don't smell like the ocean, instead, they smell like strong perfume and sun oil, nothing like mom or Marie. But, there are boys now. They got an attitude, a look, a charm. He looks at them in the June sun when the girls twirl his hair. Still, he doesn't know anything about it, what it is. 

He kisses his first girl on the first day of summer break, it's behind one of the ramps. One of the older boys wolf whistles and he turns red. She is pretty, but she ain't no Marie. 

No, her name is Ann, she is a brunette, a year older and temper of a mad dog. They go steady, as steady as a relationship as a 12-year-olds can be, He gets his father pat on the back when he brings her home when he's 14 after he walks her home there's a beer on the counter, the kitchen light turned off. He assumes he's a man now.

He gets a letter from Marie, says she lives Nevada now, married a friend of her dad. Has a son and dog, dream about moving back. But she writes about now wanting to abandon her kid. Says she wishes to meet up with him someday- if he wants to of course. He saves the number that is scribbled across the bottom. Swears to call it someday.

Its a year later and he hangs around the skate park until the morning sun shines, it's only him and another boy there, he has short dark curly hair. He is a few years older, says he leaves for college in the fall, then they sit behind the ramp. He has a bottle of vodka, it's half full. He drinks it slowly, it burns his throat and the boy laughs at him. He says his name is James. Billy thinks to himself that James is a pretty name, a pretty name for a pretty boy.

He sits propped against the concrete pillar, his back aches from the hard surface, but his arms are slack and his skin appreciative of the mornings first ray of life. He can hear it in the distance, the sound of crashing waves. Then he feels it. A pair of hands against his thighs, too big to be a girl, he tries to ignore it. Then to push them away. Then he feels the dirty city grass against his cheek, and he thinks about the monsters Marie told him about.

He walks home, shaking from his bones and out, feels his inside turn and the calm after a storm. He sits on the porch, its June. But it's not an afternoon, its a morning and rain hangs in the air. 

He sits there, head propped on his knees. Takes in the scenery that he has grown custom to from the day he learned to crawl. And he lets silent tears fall, maybe for something that was lost. 

He sits there till he hears the porch creak. He sees his dad, he sits down and drinks from his coffee. He asks what has happened. Billy tells him through cloudy eyes, his dads shake, janks him by the hair so hard it hurts. Asks him why he was such a fucking pussy, why he didn't stand up for himself, like a man. 

Billy gets so confused, he had answered the question. How would he have known that it was the wrong answer? He gets frustrated, and so, so angry. 

A year later and there is someone else sitting in his mom chair and there is a new redhead girl whose name also starts on M but is nothing like Marie. And then they leave and he understands his mom.

They move to a new town, to the east and he sees a knight, with spotless armor and he gets so angry, angry that it is not him in the shining metal. And for the story to be true, there must be a monster, and so he lets himself be consumed.


End file.
